


The Socio-Parental Urges of Apis Mellifera

by takiki16



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, hastily researched honey extraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3563255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takiki16/pseuds/takiki16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'd like to think that Kiza is the one who likes the bees, she tends the hives and sells honey at local state fairs and weekend farmers' markets, she has a little side business going while her dad takes care of Aegis business (and farming, apparently?). Like, she came to live with him on this little backwater planet and so he indulges her hobby, because it makes her happy and that's important to him." - gallifreyburning</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Socio-Parental Urges of Apis Mellifera

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gallifreyburning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Journey of a Thousand Miles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3464324) by [gallifreyburning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning). 



There is another little row of buckets, this year.  Enough, Kiza tells him with a smile, for another fair.  Maybe even enough to send further afield, to start thinking about labels and flyers and _websites_ , though damned if he knows what primitive tersie gadget that is.  He watches her during the afternoons, when the routine pings to the monitor satellites have been made and the transmitter has confirmed that yes, there is nothing to do planet-side and no Aegis business is waiting for him.  Again.

It is both irritating and soothing, in a way, to watch Kiza harvesting honey.  She’s slicing the caps off another frame now, peeling the sticky whiteness from the dark slabs and letting it drain slowly, slowly down into a pool of congealed sweetness.  There’s a part of him that wants to buzz over her indignantly, to demand that she _put that back,_ she didn’t make it, do you know how long honey takes?  But another part of him - the dominant part, thankfully - loves to see her smiling, to see her excited and happy and content in something on the dull, dead-end planet where he’d doomed them both.  Kiza planted the flowers, placed the water-dishes, took a hammer and saw to the rickety house for the precise placement of the hives. She knows the rules of harvesting; she has _apis_ in her sequence, same as he does.

_If he had the thing to do, again…_

Ah.  Best not go there. 

* * *

The single FTL Stinger had received from his old friends was from his first commander, a near-pure human who had drunk him under the table after his first battle and been drunk under in turn when Stinger had gotten his wings.  It was an offer to purchase Kiza’s commission – her work contract as a splice. 

_I still think you were a damn fool for doing it, Apini, and I’m a bigger one for blowing my next recode on this.  But I can get her into the Legion; Swarm Pilot, Third Class.  It’s a sight better than both of you rotting away on that bloody harvest backwater.  I know what she means to you_

Stinger had agonized over the transmission for a week, pacing and pacing the yard while wishing desperately for his wings.  It was the sensible thing to do for Kiza, the logical thing, the good thing.  Any friends she’d had while he flew with the Skyjackers were long gone; no one wanted to take sides against the courts and the Entitled combined.  There was no way he’d make enough in this dead-end post with the Aegis to get either of them off this planet on their own.  The guilds and the universities wouldn’t touch a splice, and he’d take on the entire Abrasax fleet alone before he’d let the brothel scouts touch his daughter.  _Apis_ pilots were as much in demand as ever (he refused to think about the fatality rates), and Kiza had been spliced and bred by Marcellian Calhoun.  She’d rise through the ranks as fast as he had, if not faster.

_And fall just as far._

It started getting to him in his sleep.  He had nightmares; Kiza covered in blood, Kiza being blown out of the swarm formation and pulverized by Cutters and Warhammers; Kiza with dead, cold eyes in the cockpit of a ship, cutting down wave after wave of nameless enemies.  Kiza with glorious humming Skyjacker’s wings, held down by a hulking Court Justice as they were torn piecemeal out of her back.  She screamed and screamed, and he couldn’t _move_ even though he felt every tear and cut as if his own court martial were happening all over again. 

And then Kiza slumps forward, blood leaking from her throat, and it’s not the Court Justice droid behind her but Caine.  Caine Wise, sobbing and shaking and dripping gore from his lycan teeth as he crawls towards Stinger, the ranks of Skyjackers recoiling in horror.

_Please sir, I didn’t mean it.  Please sir I didn’t, I didn’t, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it please sir I don’t know what I didn’t want to I couldn’t help it I can’t remember please sir I’m sorry I’m sorry I don’t know what’s happening I don’t know don’t’ know don’t know can’t remember please I didn’t want I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m afraid I don’t know sir please!_

He’d woken up screaming, every time.  Kiza thinks it’s because of his wings, and because she’s partly right he doesn’t correct her.  Waking up never helps, anyway.  In the light of the sun he has to be around her all the time, bustling around the house and making it livable for both of them with that decisive optimism he loves so much.  Remembers when he first bought Kiza’s commission; the critical way Marcellian Calhoun had looked at him as he made the request; the way the splicer had turned his head this way and that, muttering absentmindedly to herself as though he weren’t there.

_Socio-parental urges from the drone-36b Legion stem, hmmm; emergent from random subjective stimuli, no widespread abnormal oxytocin production from the batch, ha!  Possible Apis sapiens hypothalamus formation sequencing, note down for further research…_

In the end, Marcellian had jerked up from her scientific reverie at his quiet cough.  She’d blinked, then smiled that indulgent, parental smile at him.  “Stinger, wasn’t it?  Number 19-8C-XY36b.  Well, as long as it doesn’t become a regular occurrence for your batch, I don’t see why not.  You’ve been a credit to the brand.”  And she had taken his credits and sealed the sheave and handed Kiza over.  Just like that. 

The memory of the sheave in his hand, the casual way Marcellian had turned back to her lab table after the sale is what finally drives Stinger to do what he should have done in the first place.

Kiza takes everything with the same arch calm that she takes everything else.  She listens to the FTL, hears out his contorted, stumbling attempts to make a good case for leaving him behind.  It would be a great opportunity, he says.  Start out the same way he did, with the chance _not_ to throw it all away for a mad dog with a bad sequence ( _oh, but he begged you not to do it, didn’t he?_ ).  Do what she was bred to do, get off this nowhere of a planet, make some friends, see the ‘verse, maybe command a squadron of her own someday.  And it wasn’t as though she wouldn’t get leave, was it?  She could come back and see him, whenever she wanted ( _if she wanted_ ), after her first flights.  It wasn’t forever, it wasn’t the end, it wasn’t theft or punishment or sundering.

_Only selling your daughter, who loves flowers.  Only watching her fly up into that eternal sky, knowing that the Legion would grind away all the best and brightest of her like so much chaff in the grain.  Knowing that if he sold her away she would come back dead, twisted and forged and molded into something like Caine._

She is patient, thank the stars.  She asks for a night to think about it, and it’s the best and the worst night Stinger’s had on this planet yet.  The decision is finally out of his hands, but he is sure in his bones that the next morning will have him waving goodbye to the only good thing left in his life.  At least the dreams are gone.  Tossing and turning to the low hum of the beehive that is starting up in the northwest corner is a marked improvement.    

Stinger comes out of the bedroom the next morning to find Kiza tapping out a reply on the transmitter, carefully adding their station code before pressing ‘send.’   He waits, heart in his mouth, as she switches off the display and turns towards him.  She’s smiling.

“You’re a bigger idiot than I thought if you think I’d ever leave you, Da.” 

And he’s crushing her to him in a breathless hug, breathing in her smell of dirt and wildflowers and the funny Earth chemicals she puts in her hair and sobbing no, no, she shouldn’t have done that, she should have taken the offer, she’s going to be stuck with him forever on an isolated harvest planet with only Keepers for company oh gods I’m sorry thank you thank you thank you don’t go _don’t ever leave me you’re my daughter I love you_ …

* * *

The honey has been drained and strained, and Kiza is pouring it into jars for sale.  She always takes a taste before selling each batch, offering him a sticky teaspoon with that sly smile that says she’s thinking about making a joke.  Bees.  Splices.  Honey.  _Apis Mellifera,_ favored of Her Majesty the Queen. 

“Mine is always the best there,” she says smugly.  “I know bees.”

“That you do,” he tells her, smiling back.  “That you do.”    

**Author's Note:**

> Because gallifreyburning was wonderful and sent me her headcanon about Stinger and Kiza and their bees. I still haven't answered my own question of how the BEES feel about Stinger and Kiza, but I just wrote over a thousand words of tragic family feels that came out of nowhere, so...who knows?
> 
> I could spend forever discussing Stinger and the way he fills a parental role for two splices - Caine and Kiza - but could only afford so much protection for one of them at a time. All the angst and all the complexity and all the sad, sad space angel werewolf puppy you can give me.
> 
> As far as I can tell, Marcellian Calhoun was the name of Stinger's splicer. People are more than welcome to correct me, because the theaters in my neck of the woods don't have subtitles.
> 
> Also posted on my tumblr


End file.
